May 27th, 2009 by Greg Steward
Monergism Books has put together a “Reader’s Guide to the Christian Life.” At the bottom of their page you will find a link to a PDF if you want to print out a copy.
Their book recommendations are in the following categories:
Introductory Reading
Christianity is not about knowing a lot of things. It is about deeply knowing the one true God in order that your whole person may be conformed into His image.
Intermediate Reading
Grow deeper in the knowledge of God by studying how the Gospel trains us in every area of life.
Advanced Reading
Some things God has revealed about himself are difficult to understand. Careful study of these works will be greatly rewarding.
Classics
Following Christ’s example, believers have always labored to bless the generations which would come after them. These are some of the finest fruits of that labor.
Children’s Books
Strengthen the young minds under your care early with gospel-centered resources.
Evangelism
Not a secondary matter, sharing the good news is a necessary part of believing the good news.
Study Bibles
Like having a scholar read the Bible with you, study Bibles provide insightful notes and clarifying articles along the way.
Reference Works
Easy to find answers to all your Bible-related questions. These reference tools put historical and literal-grammatical details at your fingertips and make topical studies a breeze.
April 20th, 2009 by Greg Steward
[Updated April 21, 2009]
Ever need to send via email a document to someone or to a large number of people? Can everyone read the same documents that you create in Microsoft Word, or Wordperfect, or Open Office? Probably not. The solution is to send PDFs instead.
The PDF (Portable Document Format) was created with the goal of making it possible to create a document that can be read by anyone who has installed a free PDF reader such as Adobe’s Acrobat Reader. (See Wikipedia for more options.)
PDFCreator and BullZip are two such applications that will produce documents in the PDF format. You create your document using any software that can print (Microsoft Word, Open Office, Microsoft Publisher, Microsoft Excel). Then you simply “print” to BullZip or PDFCreator (they will show up as one of your printers). After you start the print process, a window will come up with fields where you can give the document a title and indicate where on your computer to save the PDF file that will be produced.
With PDFCreator, at the bottom of the window are five buttons. If you select the “Wait-collect” button, PDFCreator will collect the pages that you are currently printing. You can then print other pages from the same or different applications. Once you have collected all the pages that you want in that PDF document, press the “Save” button. You will then see another window where you can select the directory and give the newly created file a name.
BullZip works in a similar fashion but has other features. I have them both installed, but find myself using BullZip more often these days.
You can download and use both BullZip and PDFCreator for free. There are other options as well. OpenOffice is freeware that competes with Microsoft Office and has PDF functionality built in.
March 30th, 2009 by Greg Steward
Here is a little primer for Facebook newbies on communicating with others on Facebook. This does not cover communicating in the context of a group that you may have joined on Facebook. There are four basic options for communicating with others on Facebook.
“Compose a Message” for communication that you want private between you and the recipient(s).
On the Facebook menu, hold your mouse over “Inbox” and a menu will drop down.
Select “Compose New Message.”
Type the name of a friend, friends, or friend list (a selection of your friends that you group together under a “friend list” name that you determine - for another primer).
Type a subject line.
Type your message and click on “Send.”
This is also the way to ensure that your friend realizes that you send a message to them. All the methods that follow post the text to the wall space. With the passage of time, an entry goes lower on the wall. If your friends don’t check Facebook often or if they have a lot of friends who do status updates, they may not see it. So, if you want to ensure they get the message, “compose a message” to your friend(s). But this deprives us of “eaves dropping.”
“Post a message on your friend’s wall” for communication to a friend, but you don’t care if others see the message.
Go to your friend’s page by clicking on their name or entering their name in the search box at the upper right of the window. (You may see their name because you are on your own wall and see a status update regarding your friend or you may be reviewing your friend list (”All Friends”). You will know you are on your friend’s page because you will see their name at the top.
When you are on your friend’s page, type in the box that says, “Write something,” and the click on “Share.”
This will show up on their wall as “Your Name” and the message. It will show up on their friends’ walls as “Your Name” > “Their Name” and the message.
“Update your status” to communicate something short to all of your friends
This is commonly called a “status update,” but can be used for any type of message that will be seen by all your friends (subject to the above).
Go to your wall by pressing “Home” on the Facebook menu. You will know you are on your wall because you will see your name at the top.
At the top of the window, you will see a box with a share button to the right.
Enter a short note and click on “Share.” (If you type too much, the box will stop displaying any additional text.)
This will show up on your wall and on your all your friends’ walls, too.
“Post a note” to communicate something longer to all your friends.
Click on “Profile” on the Facebook menu.
Click on “Notes” on the menu below your name.
A little below and to the left, click on “Write a new note.”
Give it a title, write your literary masterpiece, and click “Publish.” (You can click preview to take a look before publishing it).
There are other options and features available with notes, but that will be for another time.
This will show up on your wall and on your all your friends’ walls, too. If you want to help ensure certain friends see it, you can “tag them.”
January 24th, 2009 by Greg Steward
Over the past thirty years I have profited greatly from the books and thinking of Mortimer Adler. I was first exposed to him when a local public television station broadcast a 1981 Bill Moyer’s series based upon Adler’s book, “Six Great Ideas: Truth, Goodness, Beauty, Liberty, Equality, and Justice.” There was an episode for each of the six ideas. Stimulated by the discussion, I bought the book. I found Adler’s common sense approach delightful. So much of modern philosophy has become distant from our day-to-day life. In the pages of this book, I found ideas that I could use and live by.
Adler is also known for his work at the Encylopedia Britannica and for his promotion of reading and discussing the “Great Books.” For years, people would come to the Aspen Institute where he taught philosophy to business executives in the context of reading and discussing some of these works.
If you would be inclined to read some of his work, I would suggest starting with the following (in this order):
- Six Great Ideas: Truth-Goodness-Beauty-Liberty-Equality-Justice (1981)
- A Vision of the Future: Twelve Ideas for a Better Life and a Better Society (1984)
- How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading (with Charles Van Doren), Second Edition (1972)
- Aristotle for Everybody: Difficult Thought Made Easy (1978)
- How to Speak / How to Listen (1983)
- We Hold These Truths: Understanding the Ideas and Ideals of the Constitution (1987)
- Desires, Right & Wrong: The Ethics of Enough (1991)
The following sites are also worth visiting:
The Mortimer J. Adler Archive
Center for the Study of the Great Ideas
January 12th, 2009 by Greg Steward
There are some attractive feature of social networks, but there are also some troubling aspects. I don’t know how many sites there are like Facebook, Orkut, Hi5, Reunion, My Yearbook, but I was able to list those without even stopping to think. It is not unusual to find in my in-box a request from someone I know (and sometimes am barely acquainted with) to join another social network.
Sometimes, the message attempts to shame me if I don’t join. (”Say yes or John Doe might think you are not his friend.”)
I’m sure there are many articles discussing the downside of social networks. Here are a few troubling aspects that come to mind.
1. Take my email contact list, please.
Some offer as a “feature,” and some require, that they access your email contact list so that invitations can be sent to EVERYONE in your contact list. You give them your email address, which is OK if you trust the site, but then you also give them the password to your email address. Whoop! Whoop! Whoop! Ding! Ding! Ding! Danger, Will Robinson! I don’t think so.
If a site requires you to give them your email address and password, just stop, close the window and find another social network to join. If it is an option to send invites to EVERYONE in your contact list by giving them your email address and password, look for the barely visible button that lets you skip that step and press it.
2. Unwise and unhealthy transparency
Another downside is the common feature of carrying on a discussion with another individual that is visible to anyone who visits your page. Think of all the people you might be “friends” with: wife, family, friends, neighbors, schoolmates, co-workers, acquaintances. Do you want any given comment visible to EVERYONE?
I have heard of and witnessed for myself enough examples of people having comments posted on their home page that could be prone to misinterpretation or extreme embarrassment. You might take a look at the settings in your social network site to see what limits can be put on that. It would be nice if sites would at least give you the option to approve any comment or posting before it gets posted.
3. It stretches our finiteness to the breaking point
I am a finite person (although each holiday season moves me closer to being omnipresent). I can only be friends with so many people. Although these social networks enable me to reveal the most intimate details of my life with a vast audience, I am not sure that that alone makes us good friends with each other.
January 10th, 2009 by Greg Steward
Have you ever had someone write something embarrassing, or potentially embarrassing, on your Facebook wall?
You might want to allow your friends to continue to post, but not allow everyone (or anyone) to see what has been posted there.
Here is how to fine tune the settings for your wall to determine who can post and view items there.
1. Click on the “Wall” tab.
2. Towards the top of the Wall section, just below the box where you can update your status, on the right, there is a link to “settings” for the wall. Click on that link.
3. In the section, “Stories Posted by Friends,” there are two sections:
-
A check box to allow/disallow friends to post to your wall.
-
There is a drop down box under “Who can see my posts made by friends.” Drop the box down and select “customize.” There you can fine-tune who can see what on your wall.
Hope this helps.
November 16th, 2008 by Greg Steward
For people who are in situations where download time is either slow or expensive, the following two web sites might provide ways to get the information from a web site without all the extra graphics and formatting.
http://finch.ploogy.net/
http://www.baresite.com/
Because some sites are highly dependent upon graphics or scripts, this will not be useful for every web site.
If you have a fast Internet connection and are not charged by the megabyte, you may not really have any use for these types of sites.
September 17th, 2008 by Greg Steward
It is not all that uncommon to meet someone in the United States who is speaking English as a second language. Whether they have come for education or for work, we have many internationals with us today.
Of those who come, many would love to make friends with Americans, to learn about this new culture they have come to, and to improve their English. For someone who is not trained as a teacher, helping someone with their English can be intimidating.
Here are some on-line resources that may help you get past the intimidation factor.
Eastside Literacy
Eastside Literacy, which is part of Hopelink, has a Tutor Support page with resources for those who want to help others with their English.
English Club
English Club is a free site that provides help to both learners and teachers. You’ll find everything from lessons for students to jobs for teachers, including interactive pages such as forums, games, quizzes, chat, help and penpals.
EasyEnglish Bible
Your friend may have an interest in learning about the Bible. EasyEnglish is a form of simple English developed by Wycliffe Associates (UK). Their site contains Bible commentaries, Bible translations, Bible studies, and other materials that they have written in simple English. They are free for you to download and use.
More Links
Resources for ESL Teachers and Their Students
ESL Gold
August 26th, 2008 by Greg Steward
It is incredible the number of web sites that a person might go to that require registration and log in. For each such web site that might mean keeping track of
- User Name
- Real Name (or the one you gave them)
- Password
- Email address
If you are like me, you might have different email addresses that you use for different purposes. Pretty soon, it becomes mind-boggling to keep track of which web site uses which user name, which password, and which email. Previously, I had been keeping the information for each web site in a text file. But I have also been nervous about the fact that a plain old text file is not secure.
Personally, I like using tools-at-hand to solve problems. Keeping track of this type of data can be done very easily with a spreadsheet. Many people use Microsoft Excel and those who don’t use Excel can get OpenOffice’s Calc for free. Both enable you to save a file which is encrypted with a password. When that is done, you will have to enter the password when you open the spreadsheet. [Tip: Keep that password in some other place.]
I created a spreadsheet with the following column headings:
- Type - Financial, Software, Blog, Wiki, etc.
- Title - Name of the web site
- Web site - The web site address
- User Name - user name you used when setting up account; also know as login name; some web sites have you log in with your email address
- Password - um, password?
- Email - your email address
- Notes - notes about the web site
From there I can sort or filter on any of the columns. If you haven’t learned to sort and filter, features that are available in both Excel and OpenOffice Calc, it is well worth the time to learn.
